Pakistan says U.S. missile attack near Afghan border kills 9

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – In what could herald as an intensified U.S. campaign against Islamic insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a suspected American missile attack killed at least nine people near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said today.

It was not immediately known whether any senior insurgent figures were among the dead, but local officials in the South Waziristan tribal agency said those killed included “foreigners” – often used to mean Al Qaeda operatives and commanders from outside Pakistan.

The missile strike, coupled with a recent bout of intense fighting in Bajur, another tribal area abutting the Afghan border, came as Pakistan wrestled with a growing crisis over demands that President Pervez Musharraf step down or face impeachment. A third provincial assembly, this one in southern Sindh province, overwhelmingly approved a nonbinding resolution today calling on the president to agree to a vote of confidence by regional and national lawmakers or relinquish his post. Two other regional parliaments approved a similar resolution earlier this week.

Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally who until late last year was also chief of Pakistan’s military, has so far resisted attempts by the 5-month-old ruling coalition, made up of former opposition figures, to oust him.

The president, a onetime elite commando, has shown no signs of acquiescing to critics’ demands. But some longtime allies have been deserting him or distancing themselves as public pressure mounts for him to step aside. Pakistani media reports for days have been rife with speculation that Musharraf’s resignation is imminent.

Pakistan’s powerful army, now led by onetime Musharraf protégé Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has signaled it will seek to remain neutral in the political confrontation. In the past, Pakistan’s military has often intervened when it perceives civilian governments as being in turmoil.

The escalating political tensions in Pakistan paralleled the most serious outbreak of fighting in months along the Afghan frontier. Thousands of refugees have fled amid battles between government forces and militants holed up in the arid, rugged border zone, where the writ of law carries little force.

American military officials in Afghanistan and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad disavowed knowledge of the missile strike against a suspected militant compound in South Waziristan, which came in the late hours Tuesday, according to tribal sources and Pakistani military officials. However, strikes against Al Qaeda and other significant militant figures that are carried out by CIA-operated drones in the area are rarely acknowledged publicly by either Pakistani or American officials.

At least two Al Qaeda militant leaders have been killed in the tribal areas this year, including Abu Khabab Masri, slain in a missile strike last month in South Waziristan.

The Bush administration has long complained that Pakistan is not doing enough to hunt down militant leaders sheltering in the tribal lands. The civilian government that took over after defeating Musharraf’s party in February elections has taken a mixed approach, mounting some military operations against the insurgents but also negotiating with militant chieftains.

Overt U.S. military action in the tribal areas is constrained by sensitivities over Pakistan’s sovereignty, but the new government has been told that continued huge infusions of military aid are dependent on cooperation in moving against the insurgents.

Elsewhere in the tribal belt, the leader of a banned group that espouses a strict Taliban-style social code was shot and killed today by unknown gunmen, his associates said. Haji Namdar was the leader of a militant organization called the Vice and Virtue Movement in the Khyber agency, which is a key route for U.S. military supplies bound for Pakistan.

Earlier this summer, Pakistani military forces moved against Taliban-linked militants in the Khyber area, which were also menacing the region’s main city, Peshawar.

 laura.king@latimes.com

Special correspondent Zulfiqar Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.